Green odyssey takes cyclist to Copenhagen

Updated
Wed 9 Dec 2009, 4:33 PM AEDT

Photo

Mr Nguyen cycled through 22 countries on his way to Copenhagen.

rideplanetearth.org

An Australian cyclist who has spent 16 months cycling from Brisbane to the UN climate talks in Copenhagen says the journey has given him a host of accounts of how global warming is changing lives for the worse.

Kim Nguyen, 28, says he first realised the severity of climate change talking to farmers in East Timor.

"They were telling me that during the last three years they had not been able to grow enough food to eat and survive because the rains that usually came at a certain time of the year were not coming," he said.

"And then when they did come they came in a deluge and there were floods."

On a worn map of the world that he used throughout his 18,000-kilometre trek, Mr Nguyen's finger traces the 22 countries he covered on his journey.

"The bike started falling apart after 6,000 kilometres so I still had 12,000 kilometres to go," he said.

"I fixed things by myself but I travelled really long distances with poor components that I eventually only could fix when I arrived in Europe."

Mr Nguyen said he usually biked 100 kilometres a day three days in a row, then took a day off before hopping on the saddle again.

He came up with the idea for his adventure 18 months ago after a friend told him about the UN climate conference.

After seeing first-hand severe flooding in south-east Asia, the spreading of the Gobi desert in Mongolia and dried up riverbeds in north-eastern China, his observations of the planet's woes pushed him to transform his adventure from a one-man affair into a joint action.

"It came out of my thoughts when I had been cycling for quite some time, thinking, actually one guy on a bike isn't much of a big deal," he said.

"Even if he's coming to Copenhagen how is that going to achieve anything."

So in each big city where he stopped, he decided to contact the local branches of environmental groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, his sponsor, to help create a network of people who followed his journey and collected his testimony of climate change around the world.

News of his adventure began to spread, and he found himself making friends on the road near the end of his trip.

When he arrived in Copenhagen on Sunday, some 60 cyclists followed him into the city centre.

A perilous journey

Yet Mr Nguyen almost did not make it, ending up in hospital three times.

The first time was due to a case of sunstroke in the Australian desert.

Another time he came close to throwing in the towel near Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital.

"My knee had hurt for more than four months," he said.

"It was really painful, and I told myself, what's the point? If I stop now, would anybody care? Probably not.

"I called an Australian friend but I didn't manage to get hold of him. And then I changed my mind ... when he finally called me 15 minutes later, I told him I was fine."

Twice he had to abandon his bicycle and board trains, once in China and once in Kazakhstan, both times because his visas were about to expire.

Now in Copenhagen, Mr Nguyen has a hectic schedule.

He is taking part in an alternative climate forum and he is due to meet with some of the UN climate negotiators, including the Australian delegation.

He plans to tell them that saving the planet is not a question of money.

"Mongolia is one of the poorest countries in the world, but it still manages to support people with solar energy," he said, explaining that residents there have solar panels on their tents.

"In Australia instead we build gigantic grids to link towns in the middle of the desert and connect it with a coal power station thousands of kilometres away."

After a bit of rest, Mr Nguyen hopes to work for a while in Europe to build up his finances, as the trip cost him almost $20,000, then a new green journey awaits.